


knew it all along

by Fluffifullness



Series: Tumblr MakoHaru Festival [5]
Category: Free!
Genre: Fluff, Glasses, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Prompt Fic, Tumblr: makoharufestival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 16:22:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1148127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluffifullness/pseuds/Fluffifullness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Makoto is obviously startled at first – even starts to pull away – but in seconds flat he’s back to narrowing his eyes and smiling kind of dazedly at Haru.</p>
            </blockquote>





	knew it all along

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "outgrown" challenge of the [makoharu festival on tumblr](http://makoharufestival.tumblr.com/). The original tumblr post is [here](http://makoharufestival.tumblr.com/post/74261346417/challenge-outgrown-user-fluffifullness-rating?utm_medium=email&utm_source=html&utm_campaign=submission_published&utm_term=respond_link).

Haru lets his concern build slowly over a period of weeks before he so much as considers actually bringing it up with Makoto. He watches it seem to get worse as he debates how best to start that conversation. He loses sleep and passes hours soaking in the bath, worrying, talking himself in and out of saying anything. Makoto probably knows already. Maybe Haru’s just imagining it. If he is, he’d be doing more harm than good if he said anything; stupid Makoto always used to worry a lot about little illnesses, after all. Maybe he still does. Or maybe it’s really worth worrying about this time…

Then there are headaches and quiet complaints, and he finally starts to lose whatever patience he had to begin with – and then he just kind of _does._ Something. Anything. Just to get the ball rolling, maybe figure it out fast so that they’ll both be better off, stress-free.

He stops Makoto on his way out of the pool one day, pulls him aside and bores into him for a long moment with nothing less than the sternest look he can muster. Makoto is obviously startled at first – even starts to pull away – but in seconds flat he’s back to narrowing his eyes and smiling kind of dazedly at Haru.

“Is something wrong?”

“No,” Haru says, maybe too harshly. “I’m fine. What about you?”

Makoto looks confused. Haru only waits a moment or two longer before letting go of his friend’s wrist and turning back to the water.

“Never mind,” he says, and then he dives in without waiting to hear Nagisa and Rei approach with comments and questions he doesn’t particularly feel like answering.

 

“I’m not mad,” he explains later. Makoto is walking alongside him, hand up to shield his eyes from the sun – which is weird, actually, because they’re barely open right now anyway. All Haru can make out is a line of startling green edged by short, dark eyelashes. He thinks they’re kind of pretty even like that, but it’s been too long since he saw Makoto looking at him with his eyes wide open and normal. So he’s still worried, definitely. He can’t stop thinking about it.

“Really?” Makoto sighs, sounding relieved. “That’s good… You were so off before, I guess I didn’t know what to think…”

“I’m not the only one,” Haru mumbles grumpily.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Haru says immediately.

And without thinking. He stops walking, sighs and waits for Makoto to do the same. When he does – when he stops and turns around and looks curiously at Haru – Haru clears his throat and ducks to hide his blush.

“I keep meaning to ask,” he admits, voice low. He hazards a quick glance up at Makoto’s face – a soothing smile, there just like he expected it would be to welcome any explanation Haru has to give.

“Just wondering,” he says, “are you… feeling okay?”

“Me? Well, yeah, I guess. Isn’t that what you were asking before, too?”

“Well, your eyes…” Haru says lamely.

“Oh,” Makoto responds brightly. “Yeah, I was actually thinking it might’ve been that for a while there. You should’ve said something sooner if it was bothering you, Haru-chan.”

“What’s that mean?”

“My vision just got a little worse, is all,” Makoto explains. “I don’t think I noticed as early as you did, but I’ve already been to see the optometrist.”

“So… you’re getting new contacts? It’s not a big deal?”

“Well,” Makoto laughs. “Actually, I have to start with a normal pair of glasses until they can get the contacts in. I’m going to pick them up after school tomorrow. But I’m fine, Haru, really. I should still be able to see normally. I honestly thought there was something else bothering you; I would’ve explained right away if I’d known…”

Haru chases away his mental image of a bespectacled Makoto – all day long and for everyone to see, probably blushing and embarrassed about it – by taking a deep breath and awkwardly adjusting the strap on his backpack.

“Sorry,” he says quietly. “Didn’t mean to get worked up over nothing.”

“It’s fine! Rei and Nagisa just finished asking me about it, too. I hadn’t realized I was squinting that much.”

Haru lets the ghost of a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. “It was really obvious.”

 

He decides against joining Makoto for his appointment the next day, but he makes sure that he’s out of the bath and ready by the time the bell sounds from the front of the house.

Makoto looks surprised when Haru appears almost immediately to let him inside.

“Were you expecting me?”

“Just a coincidence,” Haru says stubbornly – but when he sneaks a second glance at Makoto, he’s wearing that smile like he’s just called Haru’s bluff as easily as if he hadn’t been trying at all.

He can’t bring himself to sulk about it, though; he’s too busy trying not to stare at the dark frames of Makoto’s glasses, the way they make the bright green hard to look away from. It’s not the first time Haru’s seen Makoto wearing his glasses – not by a long shot – but something about the uncommon opportunity plus the added bonus of finally seeing him with eyes open and perfectly focused after so long…

Well, it’d be almost impossible not to like that. A lot.

“Aren’t those the same as the ones you had before?”

Makoto laughs. “It’s the same design. The prescription’s all that changed.”

“And you have to wear them to school?”

“D-don’t remind me,” he sighs. “It’s gonna be so embarrassing, and it’ll be at least a week…”

“Hm.” Haru lets himself look longer this time, lets his gaze take in all of Makoto as he finishes getting out of his coat and boots. He looks worried – actually more so than Haru had been expecting. They make it as far as Haru’s room before Makoto sighs again and sinks to the floor – and Haru’s still watching him, mulling it over, maybe smiling. “They look good on you.”

“That’s…” He stops and looks at Haru, obviously surprised. “Thanks, Haru-chan.”

“So why worry about it?” Haru moves to sit down next to Makoto. Just a little closer than he’d meant to, but he doesn’t attempt to adjust the distance between them.

“You know,” Makoto shrugs. “It’s been years since that many people saw me with glasses. Some of our classmates now probably don’t even know I need any.”

Haru hums under his breath and lets his eyes fall to half-mast. It isn’t often that Makoto worries about things like his reputation or popularity, but Haru sort of understands what he’s getting at, anyway.

“Are you afraid of the attention?”

Makoto doesn’t respond. He just curls in on himself, arms wrapped around his knees held to his chest, chin cradled in the dip between them, features drawn into a look of deep concern. His glasses have somehow managed to fall forward on the bridge of his nose; the resulting effect is an unguarded look, kind off-kilter or something.

Finally, he gives a short nod.

“Ah,” Haru sighs. “You know it’s not gonna be like when we were kids, right?”

A low noise of discomfort. Makoto bows his head a little more; the red in his cheeks is still getting progressively darker. “I know that…”

Haru ignores the dull ache in his chest as he continues, “And? What’s so bad about getting girls’ attention? I bet some of them already wish –”

“Oh, Haru, please don’t,” Makoto interrupts, voice strained and quivering. He’s finally buried his face in his arms so that Haru can’t see anything but his wash of soft brown hair.

“What?” Haru challenges as he changes position, kneels directly in front of Makoto and rests his hand angrily on his friend’s shoulder. “I mean it! What’s so bad about –”

“It’s not fair,” Makoto says softly. His words come out sounding muffled.

“What’s not?” Haru demands.

“I – I don’t mean to give myself too much credit or anything like that,” Makoto starts timidly and still without raising his eyes to meet Haru’s, “but if you’re right, then I – I’ve already rejected so many – I mean, not _that_ many,” he amends quickly, shrinking still more. “I told them – ahhhh, Haru, I’m sorry, I can’t do this after all!”

“This isn’t an interrogation…”

“Of course not,” Makoto says. He raises his head just enough to leave his eyes and glasses visible to Haru. “I came here because I wanted to talk about it, but I – you know, it worked out a lot better in my head.”

Somewhere in the back of his own head, Haru wonders what Makoto means by that. What could have been so important to him that he had to plan it ahead of time? He very carefully pretends that he doesn’t have his own ideas about what that might mean; it wouldn’t be fair to Makoto, and if he indulges himself in imagining it now, he knows he’ll never quite make it back to finish this conversation.

“Sorry,” he says, all dazed confusion and muddled hopes.

“It’s my fault,” Makoto responds, and then he hides his eyes again.

“Can I try once more?” he asks in a small voice.

“Go ahead…”

Deep breath. “I guess you’ve probably noticed that some girls in our class are kind of – uh – interested. In me.”

Haru nods because he can’t trust himself to speak. He’d rather not, anyway, and then it’s fine because Makoto doesn’t need to see the gesture to get the message.

“I’ve told everyone who approached me that I couldn’t accept their feelings.”

Haru’s chest aches more and more. “…Why?”

“I – I told them it was because I already have someone,” Makoto says, his voice barely a wisp of sound anymore. “Someone I really care about a lot. I think most of them understood, but I still feel bad every time – I mean,” he laughs breathlessly, “I really don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Haru’s mouth’s gone dry, but he still manages to say, “It’s not your fault.”

Makoto nods stiffly. “I came over here to clarify something because of all that.”

Haru’s eyes widen. He can’t think of anything to say. He can’t even think, he doesn’t dare.

Makoto waits quietly for another moment or two before finally unfurling enough to look at Haru with his entire face exposed. His cheeks are still red and he still looks concerned – even scared, Haru decides – but there’s something like determination, there, too.

He says, “I love you.”

And he smiles that heartbreakingly sweet smile, tips his head to one side the way he does and looks ready to accept anything in return. Denial, anger, confusion. He looks like he hopes he won’t have to.

Haru can’t feel the floor beneath him or his head spinning or the tears that well in his eyes. He can’t feel his body shake and then fall forward, into Makoto’s suddenly waiting arms – but he does feel the flood of warmth, the steady beat of Makoto’s heart by his ear, the firm wall of his chest. His smell.

“I… Me, too,” he all but sobs. “Makoto.”

He says his name again and again. He keeps saying it until he’s recovered enough to reach up, whisper a halting _Can I?_ and then carefully take Makoto’s glasses off for him, slowly – set them down, slowly, beside them – and then lean in for a kiss as fluidly and cautiously as if he were water itself.

 

It isn’t until days later that Haru remembers to clarify the direction their conversation took, its quick escalation from one thing to something entirely different.

“What was that about? The thing with your glasses.”

Makoto looks up at him from across the breakfast table and smiles sheepishly. Naturally, he doesn’t have to ask what Haru’s referring to.

“Well… Like I said, I might have just been making a big deal out of nothing,” he says, “but I thought that if other people might feel the same way Haru does about these” – he waves a hand at his glasses – “it’d be too much like I was intentionally baiting more of the girls in our class to take that kind of an interest in me – or, no, that doesn’t sound right, so maybe – like rubbing salt in old wounds? Only if they hadn’t already moved on, that is!” He blushes suddenly and looks down at his hands in his lap. “And I thought that maybe if I were in a relationship – n-not that I could handle telling anyone – and not that I was at all sure that you’d say yes – well, I just thought I should act on it instead of always using it as an excuse…”

“You’re right,” Haru says between mouthfuls of mackerel. “You just overthink everything.”

“I’m sorry, Haru-chan. That probably wasn’t the best reason or timing for a confession…”

Haru only shrugs. There’s no point in telling Makoto something he probably already knows – that any time would have been just as good. That Haru probably wouldn’t have taken anything in place of this – not even an indoor pool, a lifetime supply of mackerel, a hundred or even a thousand pictures of Makoto wearing his glasses in perfect lighting, windswept hair and shy, kind, gentle little smiles.

His only regret might be that he doesn’t get _that_ all to himself now.

“You can tell them if you want,” he adds, almost as an afterthought.

“Ah – actually –”

“What?”

“Takahashi-san came to talk to me after class yesterday,” Makoto admits.

Haru scowls (and maybe revels just a little in feeling free to do that so openly now). “So?”

“So, she said… Ah, this is really embarrassing, but she wasn’t surprised at all when I told her that I was ‘in a relationship.’” Makoto illustrates the phrase by motioning dramatically with his fingers – quotation marks in the air. He must have been pretty careful about keeping his partner’s gender out of the expression.

There’s a weird fluttering in Haru’s chest. “Wait…”

“Yeah, she” – Makoto laughs – “she asked if it was with you, Haru. Said that half the class has thought so for a while now.”


End file.
